


Little Bird Courage

by gilligankane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-09
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She remembers the last war here: the man with the charming smile whose mouth suddenly turned the wrong way, the desperation in the eyes of the students, the fear in her mother’s voice, the way Helga’s grip felt so tight Helena was sure she was going to stop breathing eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Bird Courage

Helena drifts through the Ravenclaw tower idly as the castle falls around her. The look in Harry Potter’s eyes makes her pause at the north window, looking down at the destruction in the courtyard below. The screams and cried of victory and the sound of that slight sizzle that accompanies each spell – she hears it all perfectly.  
  
She remembers the last war here: the man with the charming smile whose mouth suddenly turned the wrong way, the desperation in the eyes of the students, the fear in her mother’s voice, the way Helga’s grip felt so tight Helena was sure she was going to stop breathing eventually.  
  
 _“Just go,” Rowena begged. “Run. Take her, please.”  
  
Helga shook her head, stepping closer and trapping the sleeping Helena between them. “I can fight as well as you. Salazar can’t defeat the three of us.”  
  
“I need to keep Helena safe. I need _you _to keep her safe.”  
  
“Rowena…”  
  
Rowena ran the tips of her fingers across Helena’s forehead, brushing some stray hair out of the sleeping child’s face. “She’s so young, to be tainted by such a war,” she murmured. “A war caused by a man…”  
  
“A man we trusted,” Helga finished. “A man we called our friend.”  
  
Rowena blinked, looking back up and catching Helga’s eye. “You must understand. I need her safe. I need you safe. Godric and I can stay behind, to defend the castle. But you must lead the students to safety. And Helena.” Her hand found the edge of Helga’s jaw, curving around the corner of her chin. “She’s ours to protect. Helga, I cannot trust her with anyone but you.”  
  
Helga swallowed hard, her grip on Helena tightening imperceptibly. “Okay,” she said shakily. “Okay.”_  
  
She was young, then, small enough to fit inside the curve of Helga’s arms, but not too young to remember how she woke to the feeling of her mother’s hands on her forehead. She remembers the darkness around her as her mother stepped closer, her robes coming around Helena’s body like a cocoon and Helga’s grip tightening. She remembers how Helga’s whole body pitched forward, eyes fluttering open, when her mother stepped back, but Helga didn’t follow when Rowena kept moving back and back into the shadows.  
  
 _”Come, little one,”_  she remembers Helga saying.  
  
 _Helga took the next turn, rushing down the hall, away from the shouted curses and the sound of death that followed. “Hush, Helena,” she whispered to the crying child in her arms. “We’ll be away soon.”  
  
“Away, Helga?” a voice asked, booming down the stone halls. “I never thought you for a coward.”  
  
Helga came to a stop, mid-stride, arms pulling Helena tighter against her body. “Salazar, she’s just a child.” She turned to face him. “A child who sat on your lap as an infant. Who laughed when you cast a spell to make the wooden birds fly and who cried when you had to pull them back out of the air. She’s a _child _.”  
  
Salazar hesitated at that. Helena shifted in Helga’s arms, straining a little as she recognized Salazar, reaching for him.  
  
“She’s a child,” Helga said again, easing a step back. “You’ve already done so many terrible things, Salazar. Don’t make this another.”  
  
His wand hand, outstretched, his wand tip sparking red, shook as he lowered it. “Go,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Go and take her with you. Do not look back. Do not turn around. Just go.”  
  
Helga nodded, already readjusting her grip on the child, ignoring the little girl’s struggles. “We’ll be away soon,” she murmured into Helena’s hair, against her temple. “We’ll be away soon.”_  
  
When Harry Potter yells her name again, Helena blinks, looking at him as if seeing him for the first time. She stares into his eyes, so dark from so far away. She knows they are green -  _just like his mother’s_  – but from where she hangs, suspended, they are as dark as his hair.  
  
As dark as that other boy’s, the one with the funny name –  _Tom Riddle_.  
  
Eyes as dark as Salazar’s.  
  
She drifts closer but the eyes change until they are green again and the vision of Salazar disappears. “If you have to ask, you'll never know,” she says clearly. “If you know, you need only ask.”  
  
Helena watches him sprint away, back into a war she isn’t sure he can win. She had watched Salazar do the same, all that time ago. She had watched him dive back into a war he never recovered from and when she returned to Hogwarts and to the space in her mother’s large bed, between her mother and Helga, she had missed the man who showed her how to make wooden birds fly.  
  
“We’ll be away soon,” she says softly to an empty, crumbling tower. “But we’ll always be back.”


End file.
